Mobile positioning refers to a technology or service that acquires location information (latitude and longitude coordinates) of a mobile phone or terminal user by using a specific positioning technology, and marks a location of the positioned object on an electronic map. There are currently three main positioning technologies, namely Global Positioning System (GPS), Base Station and Wireless Fidelity (WiFi), available to calculate a location of a user. Generally, positioning success rate, positioning precision and positioning speed are used to define performance of the three positioning technologies. The positioning success rate refers to a probability of successfully receiving positioning information after a positioning request signal is sent. The positioning precision refers to error between received poisoning information and actual location from which a positioning request signal is sent. The positioning speed refers to a time interval between a positioning request signal sent and corresponding positioning information received.
Using mobile phone-based positioning of a user as an example, GPS-based positioning locates a mobile phone by sending a position signal of the mobile phone, to a positioning background using a GPS positioning module on the mobile phone. The precision of the GPS positioning is high but the positioning speed is low. Base station-based positioning determines a location of a mobile phone by measuring and calculating a distance between the base station and the mobile phone. The base station-based positioning does not require that the mobile phone have GPS positioning capability. However, positioning precision largely relies on distribution and coverage of the base station to a great extent, sometimes with an error exceeding one kilometer. WiFi-based positioning refers to positioning within a small range by using WiFi. The positioning precision of the WiFi-based positioning is inferior only to the GPS positioning, but the speed is higher than the GPS positioning.
When a user enables the GPS, a location of the user is determined by using GPS. When the mobile phone of the user does not support GPS or GPS is not enabled, the location of the user is determined by using the base station or WiFi hotspot which currently serves the mobile phone. If a user is not within the coverage of a base station or WiFi, for example, a user is in a high speed train, car, or subway train, positioning information cannot be collected, and the positioning may fail, causing low positioning success rate. Even if the positioning is successful, the positioning precision and positioning speed cannot meet the positioning requirements of the user.